


three (is a magic number).

by katarama



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [15]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Clubbing, F/M, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 11:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5161415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s when Stiles finally sees him.  He’s on the fringes of the crowd with a tiny woman with long, dark hair and a sword that that looks entirely too real to have been allowed in the club.  He’s handsome and about their age, mid-20s, maybe slightly older.  It’s hard to tell in the dim light of the club, and Stiles has never been good at judging age, anyway.  What Stiles can tell is that he has a beard, trimmed neatly, and thick black glasses, and that the robe he’s wearing has a hood lined with Ravenclaw blue.</p><p>On his hand are familiar swirling white lines, clear as day under the blacklight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three (is a magic number).

Stiles is glad for the warmth of the billowing black robes he’s wearing; though he knows he’ll melt when he gets inside, for now it cuts the crispness of the night and dulls the chill settling into the air.  Plus, it makes him feel like a badass, especially with Erica and Scott on either side of him, matching robes billowing.

“It’s Sixth Street, right?” Scott asks, loosening his yellow and black tie as he walks.  Erica would knock his hand away if she were closer; she held Stiles’ hand half the way there to keep him from playing with his green and silver tie.

“We don’t need to worry about street names,” Erica says confidently, “we’ll know when we’re close.”  Despite her insistence that the boys keep their Hogwarts uniforms in order(ish), her red and gold tie is deliberately eschew, a couple of buttons on her collared shirt popped open and her skirt rolled up at the waist precisely four times.  Stiles would know; he watched her go back and forth on all the adjustments while she stood in front of the mirror.  He didn’t mind so much.  Her heels made her legs distractingly long, and her asking him to check her skirt lengths was not a bad thing.  

She’ll fit in most, where they’re going, but Stiles doesn’t really care.  He likes what he’s wearing.  Scott and Lydia had seemed set on the group costumes, one person from each house, and they sold Stiles on the idea enough that he agreed that they shouldn’t change at the last minute just because their Ravenclaw wasn’t feeling well enough to go.

It’s not the first Halloween that Stiles has gone in a group costume that is incomplete, after all; this is the first year that Scott and Lydia managed to convince Stiles and Erica to abandon their ‘two people doing a three-person costume’ tradition.  Even though no one else quite understood why they did it, especially once Stiles and Erica’s white, spiraling tattoos were confirmed to match up, both of them have always felt like doing couple costumes felt… incomplete.

“Oh man,” Stiles says.  Erica is right, of course; the closer they get to the building, the more obvious their destination becomes, and the longer the line to the club seems to stretch.  He’s never been so glad to be Lydia’s friend in his life; she knew someone who knew someone who was in charge of promo for the event, and she had talked them onto the list.  They get glares when they cut the line and a skeptical look down at their costumes from the bouncer, but he checks their IDs and lets them through.

The area near the coat check is decked out in black and orange and cobwebs, but the club looks the same as always, well-lit by the bar and nowhere else.  That works just fine for Stiles; he did some pregaming before heading out, but it’s not enough to work up any kind of buzz.  Erica holds his hand and drags him across the room, their soulmate marks pressing together, standing out in the blacklight.  

Stiles can hear Scott’s laugh over the music of the club when Stiles reaches back to drag him along with them.

* * *

 

Stiles has a vodka cranberry in his hand that he only ordered because he liked the Halloween name they gave it, something about vampires or blood cells or something.  He doesn’t remember; he got distracted when the drink came and Erica wrapped her lips around his straw to taste it.  

“You’re terrible,” he tells her as he steals his drink back.  The bartender hands her her drink, and she laughs into the whiskey they both know she got partly because Stiles doesn’t like the taste and won’t retaliate.  It’s not fair, because Erica can’t get drunk, anyway.  

Scott says he’ll pay separately, so they move a little away from the bar to wait for him, people crowding into the space they left behind.  Things are just starting to get busy, and the dance floor is starting to fill up, souls braver (and drunker) than Stiles.  He watches two skeletons dancing close to each other for a while when Erica grabs his arm.

“Look,” she demands, pointing towards the bar.  Stiles doesn’t know what she wants him to focus on; her eyesight is way better than his, and she wasn’t very specific.  Stiles can see a crowd of people, Scott at the front, up at the bar, waiting patiently.  Everything looks in order, as far as Stiles can tell.

“Black robe, gray vest,” Erica clarifies before Stiles can even open his mouth to ask.  “ _Look_.”

That’s when Stiles finally sees him.  He’s on the fringes of the crowd with a tiny woman with long, dark hair and a sword that that looks entirely too real to have been allowed in the club.  She’s laughing and collapsing the katana to slide it into the belt loops of her shorts, but the tall guy with her doesn’t seem fazed.

The guy makes Stiles’ stomach drop.  He’s handsome and about their age, mid-20s, maybe slightly older.  It’s hard to tell in the dim light of the club, and Stiles has never been good at judging age, anyway.  What Stiles can tell is that he has a beard, trimmed neatly, and thick black glasses, and that the robe he’s wearing has a hood lined with Ravenclaw blue.

“Holy shit,” Stiles says, “our costumes match.  We should go ask him to take a picture with us!”

If it were Scott, he’d probably have some quiet objection to approaching a stranger to harass him into a shitty club selfie, but Erica has no such qualms.  She marches him over, the familiar clicking of her heels inaudible over the music.

They’re most of the way over when the guy puts his hand near his face, and Stiles sees familiar swirling white lines, clear as day under the blacklight.

“Holy shit,” Stiles says again.  He stares intently on the guy’s hand, blinking his eyes to make sure he’s not imagining it.

He doesn’t notice the girl bent over fixing her shoes, and he careens into her, spilling his drink all over himself.

“ _Stiles_ ,” Erica hisses, and Stiles apologizes to the girl.  She gives him a displeased look, but at least Stiles’ drink mostly ended up on his robe and black pants, and not on her white shirt.  Erica procures tissues from the skirt pocket she had insisted on when they picked costumes, and Stiles takes a few to clean himself up.  He’s sad to have lost so much of his drink, but it could be worse, he figures.

Until he looks up to where the Ravenclaw dude was and can’t find him anywhere.

* * *

 

“We have another soulmate,” Stiles tells Scott, frantic.  “We have another soulmate and he’s  _here_ , and he’s attractive and beardly and big.”

“Go talk to him, dude,” Scott says, smile wide and encouraging.  “Your weird Halloween tradition makes sense, now.  You must’ve known there’d be three of you.”

“He ran off,” Erica says, her lips pursed as she glances around.  “This place reeks too much for me to find him by smell.”  

“We should be able to find him by his costume, right?” Stiles asks.  There is a real person out there that completes the two of them, a human being that Stiles has  _seen_ , and he’s not going to let this slide by.

“If we get started now,” Scott agrees.  More than ever, Stiles appreciates Scott’s optimism.

* * *

 

They spend most of the night searching, their plans of getting Stiles drunk and dancing totally abandoned.  It turns out that the club is much bigger than Stiles remembered it being, three floors that are filling up with people quickly.  On top of the dance floors, there are also the bathrooms, which Stiles is not going to stalk all night no matter how desperate he gets, and the smoking area outside, which Stiles steers them away from out of habit, even though Scott’s asthma is long gone.

“He was huge,” Erica says wistfully as they hover near the wall, taking a break.  “Muscles everywhere, unlike Stiles.”

“Hey!” Stiles objects.  He’s  _lean_ , he has plenty of muscle.  It just isn’t bulky like Ravenclaw soulmate.  Stiles can’t blame Erica for being a little bit wistful, though.  Stiles is tired and sweaty and a little bit claustrophobic, and over the course of the night, he’s pretty sure that his mental image of their soulmate is becoming progressively more and more idealized.  He’s pretty sure that this dude isn’t as tall or as handsome as Stiles remembers him, but the fact that he’s so elusive is warping things.

“What if he left?” Erica asks, which is the exact opposite of what Stiles wants to hear.  He pulls his phone out of his pocket, glancing down at the lockscreen to see 2:39 AM in small white numbers.

“He hasn’t left,” Scott says certainly.  Scott is Stiles’ best friend.  Scott is the best person ever.  “But, uh.  The club isn’t open too much longer.  Maybe if we go by the exit we can find him?”

They wander over there and wait, trying not to look conspicuous and awkward just standing there.  They get hit on a lot by drunk people on their way out, but Erica handles the ones who linger.  None of them are the stubbled dude with glasses and a white tattoo, though.

Finally, it hits 3 AM, and they’re ready to give up.  Their failure weighs on Stiles, because it’s a very real possibility that this was their one chance to ever meet him, and that they blew it.  Soulmates don’t always find each other.  Sometimes they’re strangers who pass on the bus, who get married to other people and live in relative happiness, mismatching marks be damned.  Stiles knows he’s lucky, having Erica, even.

But Stiles had so much hope.  Having a taste of what he could have and then losing it because he couldn’t keep his feet on the ground burns.  Not only is it a palpable loss, but it’s one that’s  _his fault_.

The clock on Stiles’ phone hits 3 AM, and Stiles sighs.  “Let’s go,” he says.  He moves his phone down to slip into his pocket, but it slips from his hand, clattering to the ground in front of him.  He stares at it for a very long moment.  He feels like it’s the pathetic end to a wash of a night.  They didn’t even have fun with the time they did have there, and the phone, lying sad and alone on the sticky club floor, is about as close to a physical representation of the night as things get.

Until there’s a hand reaching down for it, a big hand with thick fingers and a hairy arm.

And a white, swirling tattoo covered by a loose black robe sleeve.

“Did you drop this?” he asks, and Stiles’ heart skips a beat.  

Stiles follows the man’s arm up to his perfectly tied Ravenclaw tie, up to his face.  The glasses are thick, surrounding gorgeous hazel eyes.  He’s just as attractive as Stiles remembers, down to the perfectly neat stubble, and Stiles’ breath catches.

“We found you,” he says breathlessly, so relieved he could cry.  

The man looks confused, but Stiles can’t find the words to explain.  When he holds out Stiles’ phone, Stiles stretches his hand out, soulmate mark up.  “Erica,” Stiles says, and she steps up next to them, holding out her hand as well.

Ravenclaw’s eyes are wide, and Stiles’ face splits into a relieved grin.  “We found you,” he repeats.

“And you’re hot as hell,” Erica adds, drawing a laugh from the tiny girl with the sword belt.

Stiles grabs his phone and pockets it quickly, Erica shaking Derek’s hand while Stiles’ is busy.  “I’m Erica, and he’s Stiles.”

“I’m Derek,” he says, “and we’re soulmates.”

His face breaks out into a grin that Stiles feels down to his core.

“Yeah.  We’re soulmates.”

**Author's Note:**

> Join me on tumblr at sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com


End file.
